by Steven Lang
‘This is Cermic, sir,’ Masters said. ‘I don’t know the other man. He is the one I shot. It appears I have wounded him in the abdomen, sir.’
Boyd turned off the motor. A deep silence descended over the clearing. McMahon looked up at the trees overhanging the place. He turned back to Masters.
‘Quite correct. I think we can safely diagnosis Mr Cermic as deceased. See what you can do for the other chap. We’ll do our best to get medical help. I’ll arrange for someone to assist.’
He went back to the group of men.
‘Numbers, Barnes,’ he said.
‘Seven, sir.’
‘Seven?’
‘Sir.’
For the first time he addressed the group of men who had come in the four-wheel drives.
‘Which of you is the leader?’
A heavy-set individual released his arm from above his head, a narrow wristwatch band cutting into the flesh. He was wearing dark pants and a blue anorak, unzipped; a man with a protruding belly, in his thirties. It would be a mistake to think any of this was fat.
‘Name.’
‘Bill,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’ll ask the questions. Surname?’
‘I said, who are you?’ Bill said.
‘Boyd,’ McMahon said.
‘Sir.’
‘Would you do me the service of using one of those lumps of wood to break Bill’s left leg.’
‘Sir.’
Boyd bent down to pick up one of the handles and came over.
‘Permission to speak,’ Bragg said.
‘Not granted. Go ahead, Boyd.’
‘Polson,’ the man called Bill said.
‘That’s better,’ McMahon said. ‘You can hold off for a moment, Boyd. How many in your party, Mr Polson?’
‘Eight.’
McMahon looked around the clearing. ‘Reports please, gentlemen.’
All his men were present. No one else was injured.
‘We appear to have something of a problem. According to my calculations there should be eleven men, including our two unfortunates over there. I can only see nine.What did you say your name was?’ He pointed at Polson, who repeated his name. ‘Are all your men accounted for?’
This seemed to be a novel question. Polson counted his companions.
‘All except Stevo,’ he said.
‘And these men here. Are these the ones you came with?’
The man seemed to have trouble with this question.
‘What I mean is, are these the men who accompanied you tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought as much. Well thanks to your efforts I have one dead man, another injured and it seems we have lost two of our guests, including, possibly, a terrorist wanted by every agency in the western world. I hope you are well pleased. Barnes, go and see if you can assist Masters. Boyd, you and Leuwin can do a recce around the clearing. Sergeant Bragg, you had something to say?’
‘I know some of these men, they’re locals.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. So,’ coming back to Polson, ‘explain. Who are you and what are you doing here?’
‘We’re timber workers, out of Eden. I had a dozer and a snigging machine rooted by these cunts. Over behind me is Howard Tench. He owns the dozer. Owen Rogers here owns the snigger.’
‘Sergeant?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So.Where are your vehicles?’
‘About half a mile back up the road, on a side track.’
‘No doubt obstructing our own.’
He paused briefly, considering the options. He would have liked to know how they knew to come here but pushed it aside, it could wait.
‘Mr Polson, I assume that at this point you and your men will do everything you can to assist us in our operation?’
‘Whatever you reckon.’
He looked at the man, waited the ten seconds required for him to raise his head and meet his eyes.
‘You don’t sound convincing,’ he said.
‘We’ll help,’ Polson said.
‘You may lower your arms. Sergeant, take Mr Polson and one other man with you in the truck, I want our vehicles down here as soon as possible. Get Polson to drive.’
‘Sir.’ It was Bragg.
‘Yes.’
‘The van has a flat tyre, sir.’
‘It does?’
‘Yes sir, deliberately damaged.’
He looked at the sergeant with his extra kilos. ‘Then you’ll have to go on foot,’ he said.
The logistics were only getting harder. They would need to get someone up on the ridge to achieve radio contact. He needed helicopter support immediately and right then he didn’t even have a fucking jeep. They would have to start a manhunt in the morning, although his fugitives, if they had any sense, would already be miles away. He needed a roadblock set up. If this cretinous logger had not killed Cermic he’d probably have done it himself.
thirty-four
The forest moved around him. A wind came up along the creek and gently stirred the tops of the trees, moved on. Something with large wings flapped; he could hear the movement of its pinions against the dispersed invisible molecules of air, those same molecules which went, also, in and out of him, but not of Carl, because Carl was dead in this dark place.
Kelvin crouched on damp rocks next to the body, arms wrapped around his knees, hearing the night. After the flying thing had gone, the sound of the creek came in again, a small incessant noise, the splay of water falling on black rock. He wished that they would come for him, come and get him, because what he knew of this place he did not like and he wanted to be relieved of it.
It was the cold which stirred him.The adrenalin which had sustained him thus far was being diluted and he began, by parts, to be returned to his senses. In the rush of events it seemed that a deeper part of his psyche had taken over, deciding with primal ruthlessness which parts of his body it required to keep functioning, and discarding the rest. It had been dark and he had been moving so it had dispensed with sight, taste and smell, giving all his attention to sound and touch. Now that he was at rest the other bits returned, clamouring for attention, and with them an acute bodily awareness. He was cold and there was a smell of shit. Had he shat himself? He had heard that people do when terrified. But a quick check showed it wasn’t him, which meant it must be Carl.
Abruptly he stood and went to the creek, suddenly keen to wash his hands. He crouched over the water, the end of the little torch in his mouth the way he had seen Carl do, so as to point its light at his hands, tasting the metal on his tongue. His hands were covered in blood, sticky with it. He rubbed them in the water and clouds of the stuff puffed away, but it wasn’t just his hands, his arms where they had been under Carl’s body were caked in it, cold, hard, congealing in the fibres of his shirt. Carl must have had injuries on his back. Then the realisation penetrated. There would be blood, too, on the torch, where he had been holding it. Carl’s blood was in his mouth. That taste of metal. He spat, he gagged and spat. If there had been more food in his stomach he would have brought it up. He took a couple of paces upstream and rinsed his mouth again and then again. Then went back to cleaning his hands. The blood had gathered itself in the cracks and pores, beneath the fingernails, the water was icy and he was shivering and the blood would not be removed. Carl was dead and it was his fault. With the dissipation of the adrenalin his mind, too, was beginning to work. He had wanted Carl dead.When Carl had proved himself to be alive Kelvin had wanted him dead so he wouldn’t have to stay with him and now he was dead and the weight of his absence and his own part in that loss was too much for his mind to bear. He started to wander away, down the creek, without direction, he simply did not want to be cold anymore, did not want to be there anymore; moving for the sake of movement in the same way as before he had sat, simply to be sitting.A hundred metres further down a tree had fallen across the gully, blocking the way. If he wanted to continue he would have to climb out. He sat. A cigarette wo
uld have been good, or some food, a cup of coffee, but he had none of these, not even the cigarette which was strange because he had had some, and matches, and he could not remember leaving them anywhere. By then he was shaking uncontrollably, teeth chattering. The torch, too, was fading. He had been using it too much. He banged it on his palm. It brightened and then immediately went dull again. Carl had another torch. More than anything, more even than Carl’s body, he was frightened of the darkness. He began to make his way back up the creek.
Carl had food too; as they were leaving he had put a plastic bag of nuts and raisins in one of the pockets of his trousers, ‘You never know when you might be hungry,’ he’d said.
‘Fucking Americans,’ Andy had said when he saw Carl’s equipment.Andy had got the better of them. Death, that thing which happened in films and books, was no longer abstract.
Carl was where he had left him.A crumpled body in bloody shitty black army pants. Had he expected him to have moved? In the pockets he found the food, the complex folding knife, a map, a compass, the torch, some string, matches, some tobacco, his own, he must have given it to Carl, the keys, his watch which was still, quietly, improperly, ticking away to itself. Three am. He lit a smoke and pulled on it heavily, drawing the tobacco into his lungs, drinking the calm that came with the first hit of the drug. He unfolded the map and tried to locate his position. They had stowed the bike in scrub a couple of ridges across to the west. If he climbed back up the cliff and crossed the creek he might be able to find his way over the next ridge and then across the next valley after that. If he was in the right place and going in the right direction.
A helicopter came over the hill.
It came from behind him, beating the air, the great searchlight attached to its underbelly shining down in white radiant shafts, lighting up the tops of the trees, its motor filling every atom of the night with noise, a machine of extraordinary power, invincible. Kelvin curled in against the base of the tree.
When it was passed he looked at the map again but found it meant even less. He tried to think but the machine had made his hands shake, it had addled his brain.They had not forgotten him.They wanted him. He remembered the compass and took it out, laid it on the map and spent several moments turning it, or turning the map, until eventually he had them both aligned in roughly the same direction.
Carl had drawn the new road’s path along the ridge in red biro. Kelvin was delivered, momentarily, of a clear picture of the map on Carl’s wooden table, the milky plastic stem of the old biro, Carl’s attempt to teach him about maps. They would be watching the roads, that’s what the helicopter said.The bike was out. That’s what the helicopter said. Kelvin had no idea where he was. Jessica had said to go downstream when you’re lost. When they were in the bush together and he asked her what happened if you got lost she said you find a creek and follow it down. Eventually you’ll come out somewhere.
He located a creek on the map, somewhere near the logging dump. But there were lots of them, lots of little blue threads on the green map running at right angles to the red contour lines where they wriggled tightly together. At least, he thought, the creeks go in the same direction, all running to one river, shown on the map as wide and sandy, even he could see that. And what was this river called? Cooral Creek, flowing in slow, wide meanders towards the Coalwater, miles away.
In the distance he could still hear the helicopter, hovering.
He stuffed Carl’s belongings into his pockets as best he could. He went to Carl’s feet, took the heavy boots in his hands and set about dragging the body down through the bracken to the creek.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
The slope was steep. Once he had him moving it wasn’t so hard. He tried not to think about the effect it was having on his body.There were some flat rocks next to the stream and he laid him out on them, putting his arms on his chest like they do in coffins, the skin already cold, the head, when he straightened it, both impossibly large and at the same time smaller than it was when it had belonged to Carl.
He stood beside the body searching for some appropriate words, but could think of nothing.
At the fallen tree he climbed up and out, keeping towards the right, leaving the creek bed, taking the contour towards the ridge, warmed by the exertion, but stumbling and awkward. When he thought he had found the back of the ridge he began to follow it down. All his movements were contained within the small circle of light provided by Carl’s torch, tree trunks passing on both sides, walls of scrub looming up, logs and rocks to be clambered over, branches of fallen trees negotiated. The larger direction was invisible, given only as down. His path defined by the relative inclination of the ground. When it became too steep he assumed he had turned too far to the left or right and sought to retrace his steps, managing to maintain his course by a kind of exhausting intuition. Jessica would have been proud of him.
Jessica would be asleep in Sydney. He looked at Carl’s watch. He was supposed to meet her at the airport in seven and a half hours. He doubted that would be possible. Jim would have to go. At least he had thought to arrange that. But his failure stung him further. Now he would never see her again.That thought was too difficult to deal with. It needed to be filed somewhere else, along with Carl being dead, somewhere behind him.
After a time he heard birds, tiny chinks of sound around him.Then the kookaburras began calling in the day. He stopped and looked outside the small fading area illuminated by the beam of the torch. There was a greyness in the east. He turned off the torch, it would be easier without it.
He found he was tracing a course down the spine of some great mountain. Out of the fading night ridges began to appear on both sides, paralleling his route. To his left, perhaps in the gully he started from, there was now the rush of falling water. Somewhere below he could begin to sense the valley floor, but his legs were like jelly, refusing simple commands. The slope had become so sharp that he had to hang onto trees to stop himself from hurtling down.
The gathering light had come just when it was needed because the further down he went the thicker the scrub became. The rough-barked eucalypts gave way to spreading trees with smooth white and grey trunks, their branches draped with long tresses of bark, the dry mustard-smelling dogwood thick beneath them. The slope levelled out somewhat and then presented, remarkably, an area of grass, heavy with dew. A mob of wallabies occupied its lower half. They looked up, ears turning like radar dishes, then leapt away. At the lower edge of the clearing the undergrowth was particularly thick. He had to crawl under vine-covered bushes to get through. On the other side, down a short and vertical drop, was the riverbed.
He stepped out onto the wide corridor of sand, shaken and empty. The night was gone, he was off the mountain, out of the bush, the way now clear. Looking up to the hills in the distance he could see the sun begin to touch their tops. He found the stream, not a big run of water, most of it under the sand, but a definite flow, meandering from one side of the sandy bed to the other, gathering itself in long shallow pools where it encountered the smooth granite boulders.
He sat in the very centre of the expanse of sand, as far from the forest on either side as could be achieved, and searched out the packet of nuts and raisins. He ate a few, then was unable to stop pushing them into his mouth until they were gone. Afterwards he lay face down on a boulder and scooped the water up into his mouth. There were old cow pats on the riverbed but he didn’t care. He washed his face and his hands, scrubbing the grooves in his skin until every last skerrick of blood was gone. He could do nothing about the clothes. He went back to his seat and smoked a cigarette, studied the map.
It was all guesswork, but it seemed to him that he was probably only six or seven of the map’s squares from the boundary to Carl’s property, which was to say six or seven kilometres as the crow flies, but the creek meandered, so it was probably closer to twelve kilometres. He could do that in three or four hours, another half up to the house. Then he could get the Toyota and drive over to the Far
m, get Jessica’s car from the main house, even drive the Toyota all the way to Eden, Carl didn’t need it anymore. It was only six in the morning, which meant the airport at Merimbula was still possible by lunchtime. He was taken by this idea, this strange assumption that the night, which had lasted years, should have simply deposited him back into the world. That, by getting to Merimbula on time, he might make it all right again.
He started walking, hopeful; filled, in fact, with exhilaration. The sun was sweeping down the sides of the hills and everywhere it touched was radiant with its light. He was alive. He was not the one who was dead. The boy who had survived his family in Eden, who had survived living in a squat in Sydney, Daz, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, was still going. He’d been out all night in the forest and he was still alive and within cooee of home, or rescue, or something. He paced out, stepping large on the soft riverbed. He would make the meeting with his lover, he would explain all, he would ask for forgiveness; he would do, he had no idea what he would do, but it would be all right, he would escape.
Except the sand was difficult under his feet, large-grained, dry, granting no purchase for his feet. When he had begun walking after his breakfast there had been a distinct corner perhaps a kilometre away, marked by tall white gums standing out of the darker forest behind. He had walked towards it for what seemed hours without it getting any closer. When he eventually reached this landmark he was faced only with another stretch looking exactly the same. He could measure the passing of time but there seemed to be no way to judge the passage of distance.
Then the helicopter came again.
He was standing in the middle of the creek when he heard it. He had been walking like that all the way. As if he had wanted to be found. The noise of the rotors echoed off the mountains, shock waves of air preceding them. He ran for the bank, diving into the forest and crawling under the scrub. Looking back he could see his footprints in the sand, like a long signpost, pointing directly at him.
